f history has been that they first become free and then
rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of
too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic
virtues. The process of education has been going on rapidly in the
Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if we take superficial
indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time
during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more
intense and uncompromising. It is not apparent that educated Southerners
are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the Negro, or
less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. It is their voice alone
that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are
liberal in their views as compared with the more ignorant whites, then God
save the Negro!

I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of
Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern
world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such
opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at all
surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to
the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of
this superfluous race as possible?

The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the Negro
is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting
therefrom. It has nowhere been declared as a part of the Southern program
that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in
government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been
strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a
Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted
with any degree of power. A system of education which would tend to soften
the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of
inestimable value. An education which by a rigid separation of the races
from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy,
and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the
inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than
beneficial results. It would render the oppressing class more powerful to
injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury,
without proportionate power of defense. Th